


In the After

by citrusella



Series: Citrusella's Comfortember 2020 Fics [2]
Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: (in the ambiguous sense I mean), Conversations, Corrupted Steven Universe, Gen, Post-Episode: s06e19 I Am My Monster, Regret, Worry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-12
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:15:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27518248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/citrusella/pseuds/citrusella
Summary: Steven wonders if it was corruption.Comfortember days 7-10, though only in the most tenuous, technical sense (and by that I mean all four phrases are mentioned): "blanket fort", "lashing out", "confession", "crying"
Relationships: Garnet & Steven Universe
Series: Citrusella's Comfortember 2020 Fics [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2011213
Comments: 5
Kudos: 33
Collections: lofi fanfics to practice social distancing to





	In the After

**Author's Note:**

> 11 is closer to 10 than 9 is to 6?
> 
> ...I think my angst gland only barely understands what comfort is... XD
> 
> Also, yeah, I've decided on a series, to keep the fics in an order of the chronological period through the month.
> 
> This is a soft sequel to [Striations](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23727937). (I say "soft sequel" as in they could both take place in the same fic "universe". Context of that fic is not required to understand this one.)

In the after, things aren't exactly… _easy_ … for Steven Quartz Cutie-Pie Demayo Diamond Universe.

Dr. Maheswaran leaves her house call, begrudgingly accepting Steven and Greg's decision to forgo hospital observation and giving them a list of signs that would mean it's an emergency and he really does need to come in, and Steven is left alone.

Well, not alone. Someone is in his room constantly. He's never alone.

Amethyst makes her best semblance of a sad nest for him, though it mostly means putting an obnoxious amount of blankets on his bed… which might be a little uncomfortably warm, but the weight helps him take a nap, anyhow.

Everybody else just seems to be eyeing him to make sure it doesn't happen again somehow.

…Thankfully, the diamonds do _not_ take up a shift. He's not sure he can confront that giant spaceship in the room right now. Or ever. Ever sounds good.

When Garnet arrives to watch him, something's different.

She sits on the floor. She does not look at him. She trains her eyes on… _through_ … his cracked ( _he_ did that, it's _his_ fault, he's awful) sliding glass door, looking toward the rooftops of the boardwalk.

He stares her down, furrowing his brow, then unfurrowing it when it makes his head hurt.

Out of the blue, she says, "You're going to ask a question."

Of course she knows this to be truth—or at least a very high probability. _Of course_ she does, because she _always_ does.

He huffs.

"I… I need to know. Um."

Garnet is silent. She looks to him with gentle eyes he can just barely make out through her glasses.

He takes another breath.

"Do you… Did I… Was it corruption?"

Garnet's expression changes from neutral to frowning.

"…It doesn't matter now."

Steven pushes himself up to sit, knocking a wad of Amethyst's not-exactly-blanket-fort off his bed and onto the ground in the process. He's at least glad he's less sore a few days after… _that_ , he guesses. At least it doesn't hurt to sit up now. …What a low bar.

"Why not? It happened to me. Don't I deserve to—I…" He wants to yell, to lash out as he did sometimes when he was younger and wanted answers, or like he has done so many times in the past week, but he still doesn't have the energy, so he sighs instead. "It feels like it matters."

Garnet taps her glasses, causing them to dissipate and allowing her to put her face on full display for the young man in front of her.

"We don't know." Her lips form a firm line.

"You don't—how can—"

Something like a grimace crosses her face as she relates, "You changed in appearance. You didn't seem to be able to speak or understand. You were acting off fight or flight reflexes. You did… hmm… revert to normal, after your tears fell into the water, but the cause is different and it isn't clear if the tears were the factor that caused it to go away. We can't know without more information. I wouldn't even know which river of time to follow to begin to give you an answer, Steven."

She's sounding more like Sapphire than herself—perhaps she's calculating likelihoods, searching through the paths of time right now and that's why, Steven doesn't know. Her answers aren't helping, though.

"Maybe I _should_ have decided to go to the hospital. Maybe if Dr. Maheswaran did tests, I'd have answers."

She responds flatly. "I don't think this is her specialty, Steven."

"…I'm not _anyone's_ specialty," he scoffs. "Most gems don't even try to understand my human half, and doctors would probably take too long to understand my gem one."

Garnet purses her lips. She doesn't say anything.

"Maybe we could do it on purpose, have the Diamonds shoot me with the normal kind of corruption, see what happens." There's some sort of levity in his voice, as if this is supposed to be funny.

Garnet's not laughing.

After a moment, whatever internal part of Steven was laughing isn't, either.

"I… I'm sorry. I'm awful, that's awful, I never should've—" He rubs the back of his head.

Garnet is quiet long enough to put Steven even more on edge. Her eyes are on the foot of his bed when she raises them to look at Steven again as she opens her mouth.

"What…" Oh geez, Garnet is _asking a question_ , he really _has_ screwed everything up… "Steven, you seem to think that knowing whether or not it was corruption will change what happened." —False alarm.

He huffs out a long breath and tries to focus his gaze on Garnet's eyes—then, when that proves to be too overwhelming, having to take in the full brunt of exactly how much she's hurting ( _he_ hurt her, he hurt _everyone_ ), he trains his eyes on her nose instead and hopes she won't notice.

"I-I… I don't think it will, I just… It feels like if I know if it was or… If I know, then I can _do something_ about it, or… or avoid feeling… feeling the things, or _doing_ the things, that could make it happen again… I… I need to fix this, Garnet."

For a second, that gives her pause, and Steven swears she looks like she's about to cry. "…You don't have to put everything on yourself, Steven."

He rubs his comforter.

"Connie's mother suggested you likely have something psychological going on, from what Connie has told her and her examination with you." Dr. Maheswaran said as much to him, but from Garnet's phrasing, it feels like his family got more context than his brief exchange with the doctor about it.

His own eyes feel ready to cry, but no tears are coming out yet.

"When I… When I was on Homeworld, it… I started feeling weird," he confesses. "Well, I mean, okay, it's not like I was doing great _before_ ," an understatement, "but… I mean… it felt like some part of my brain… _ripped open_ and all these thoughts that… some of them didn't even make sense… were coming out, but I couldn't keep any of it under control, even though—I mean, I tried, but…" Certain he's not being very clear about what he means, he exhales tersely, shakily through his nose, his eyes watering from talking about it, reliving it. It's not as if he's telling her something she doesn't already know, but that doesn't make it easier to say out loud.

"…Maybe it _was_ corruption then," Garnet answers matter-of-factly.

_It's sort of like if MC Bear-Bear didn't tear the fabric of his arm, but the fabric of his mind._

"You think?" His response is reserved, surprised, even though he was on some level fishing for it. The surface tension of his watered eyes breaks and a few of the tears find their way down his face.

Her jaw tenses. "There's still no way to know, Steven. Peridot and Pearl could look into it… scientifically, that is; we could have them work with Dr. Maheswaran. But I don't foresee a high probability of you finding the answers you're looking for, unless it happens again. And the futures where that occurs are unlikely."

She doesn't know if he'll be relieved by that last revelation or frustrated by it.

He groans dejectedly. Frustrated, then.

"Then what am I supposed to do?" His voice cracks; he wipes his cheeks. New tears wander down the paths the first ones left behind.

"Recover from what happened. Let us help you. And focus on the future. You won't accomplish anything by constantly thinking about what did or didn't occur in the past." Sigh. More high-and-mighty advice, no matter how right it might be.

"…Wait, but Connie said you talk about the past in therapy all the time." She had stayed with Steven in the time her mother had been talking with everyone downstairs. They'd talked about… things. It had mostly been a lot of questions from him and Connie answering what she could… and some discussion of the plot points of a recent _Crying Breakfast Friends: For Dinner_ episode (which, honestly, had hit too close to home for him)…

Garnet puts her hand to her chin. "Perhaps. But it's unhealthy to be _stuck_ in the past, Steven. Focusing on what you can't change leaves you no time to look at what you _can_."

She's right. Of course she is. But he doesn't have to say it.

"Remember that we're going to support you, Steven." He frowns. The odds are against him. It won't be easy. "You're not going to do it alone. We're here for you." She crosses the room and sits next to him on the bed. "And lunch is downstairs for you."

He groans and puts his face in his hands as Garnet puts her arm around him. He leans into her as if the realization he'll have to get up has taken all the energy out of him. "Gah, couldn't I just stay in bed for another hundred years? I'm not ready to go down there yet."

"Hmm… there _are_ futures where you live that long, but no," she says with a subdued smile and the slightest of lilt to her tone. Without another word, she summons her glasses back onto her face, then stands and walks toward the door. "I'll see you in ten minutes." She's down the stairs, and he's completely alone for the first time in four days.

She's right. Of course she is. She _always_ is.

He sighs and starts getting dressed.

**Author's Note:**

> I always feel worried I'm not good at writing Garnet so here's hoping I did it well! o.o


End file.
